A cute story about three princesses who each WANT to be the prettiest, but eventually remember that they have more important things to do. My kids LOVED this one (and I have to say, I liked that one of the princesses was named Princess Libby), and now we need to seek out Lum’s other princess books.

A new Gerald and Piggie!! Hooray! Gerald and Snake find out that Piggie and Brian Bat are hitting it off–and then they start to worry that their best friends won’t need them anymore. Another great installment by Willems.

I do have ONE gripe about this book, which is that the tiger who appears and gets Lily’s kitty in trouble shouldn’t be quite such a surprise to Lily, since she adopted him at the end of Silly Doggy. Still, Lily’s animal raising skills amused us just as much, if not more, in this new story as in the first, and this is one that I not only reread several times, but that my 6 and 4 year old quickly learned enough to reread by themselves. Cute, funny, and right on target to audience (they especially loved the line, “As for Mom’s carpet, I can’t even talk about that. It was revolting!”

And one adult book (and I was very impressed by how quickly I got this from the holds list):

I thoroughly enjoyed this second installment of the Cormoran Strike detective series (yes, I probably wouldn’t have read it if it weren’t written by J.K. Rowling; I have no shame about this). I think I like that it follows the basic hard-boiled detective and green partner pattern, and I love the character development between Strike and Robin, and I LOVE that (at least so far) it has not become a romance. I did tell a friend who is hoping they will get together that there’s still room for it to develop (not least because Robin’s fiancé Matthew seems even less likable in this novel), but I’m still holding out hope that it will just stay a detective-partner relationship.

I thought the murder mystery part was also well done (and that the whodunit was less of a cheat than the first book), but be aware that the murder in this volume is extremely gory and disturbing.

I knew blogging would get short-changed during the move, but I didn’t quite anticipate how long it would take to feel settled enough to pick it up again. One post that I still must write is my official good-bye to Durham. There is so much that I love about that city, from living there 8 years (not long in the grand scheme, but a quarter of my life so far, and more than half of my adult life), plus having all of our kids born there, and I want to sum up some of that. But in the meantime, I want to share some of the good things we’ve found in our new home: Forest Hill, Maryland.

So, without further ado, and in no particular order, 10 great things about Forest Hill, MD:

Ok, I kind of have to put that (it’s why we are here, after all), but it’s also true. We’ve been very warmly welcomed into the congregation here and are starting to find our way in our new church home.

2. About the best blend of rural and urban that suburbia could hope for.

We can see horses from the back of the church, there is a big farm field on the way to church, and a beautiful state park is just a few miles up the road. It only takes a few minutes of driving to feel very much out in the country. But drive a few minutes the other way, and we’re in downtown Bel Air, with both a charming main street and big box suburban strip right around the corner. We haven’t actually gone into Baltimore yet, but we could get to most parts of the city in under an hour. It’s a pretty nice combination of worlds.

3. The post office.

Seriously, the Forest Hill post office is one of the friendliest and easily THE most efficient post office I’ve ever been in.

4. Multiple ice cream options.

We’ve got Wilson’s Corner down the street (the kids’ favorite for the small merry-go-round that is also there…and at 50 cents, it’s the best value ride I’ve come across recently), Broom’s Bloom over in Bel Air (local creamery that also has some lunch options we want to try out sometime), and the Ice Cream Hut next to our grocery store…and those are just the ones we’ve gotten around to trying.

5. The parks

We have a great park with a playground right down the street, and Rocks State Park just a little bit further. We’ve also played at several larger playgrounds nearby, despite some misadventures (a wasp sting at one, and the sheer size of the other one). We are still finding our footing here, but there is no doubt that there are great parks around.

Rocks State Park. There is a better view if you go further out, but it’s a pretty steep drop, and I had all three kids along. Nope.

Another view at Rocks.

6. Produce options.

As with ice cream, and because of the near-rural location, we have lots of farm options for produce. We haven’t signed up for any CSA’s yet (and I think at this point, we will probably hold off until next spring), but there are several produce stands and farms that sell their produce a short drive from our neighborhood. Additionally, the Bel Air Farmer’s Market is great–we just have to stop forgetting that it closes at 11 AM, not noon!

7. Fun day trips.

We’ve just barely scratched the surface on this so far, but we are in a good location for some nice day trips. We spent one Friday going up to Lancaster County and riding on the Strasburg Railroad. There are lots of places in Baltimore I’d like to check out, and even DC isn’t too far if we plan correctly. We’ve also had friends tells us that we can do day trips to the beach, which we’ll have to try out at some point.

8. Seeing old friends.

Speaking of friends, we’ve gotten to see several friends from college, and I got to have dinner with a childhood family friend and her husband (hosted graciously by my sister!) before they head out to Utah for a postdoc opportunity. We’ve also had several NC friends visit, which reminds me that it’s good to have friends all over!

9. Proximity to the water.

We don’t have a boat and I’m not a big seafood eater. But it’s still fun to be back in a part of the country where you are never very far from the water. The kids and I have gone down to the Anita C. Leight Estuary Center, and Mark and I spent our anniversary going out to Havre de Grace. We’ve all goggled at the Conowingo Dam when driving up to Cecil County. I’m sure the longer we are here, the more we’ll find to enjoy about living so close to the Chesapeake Bay again.

At the estuary center.

The lighthouse at Havre de Grace.

10. Proximity to family.

We knew when we moved that this was going to be one of the high points of coming back to Maryland, and it is. We’ve already benefitted from several day trips down to visit family and several instances of family visiting us. All of our parents came to church for our first Sunday, we’ve gone to a Nationals’ game with my sister, the guys took both grandpas to an Ironbirds’ game, and our three-year-old’s birthday party was as packed as any we’ve had–all family members. Having our families nearby definitely helps make it feel like we’ve come “home.”

Now that we are starting to put down new roots, I hope to get back to blogging more regularly, so stay tuned…

May apparently wasn’t much of a better month for posting than April, and I don’t think June will yield many posts, either. We are in the thick of moving preparations, and I only have time to write this post because I’m experiencing a very slow chat reference shift today.

In the midst of all the transition that seems to be hitting, I’ve been finding myself rereading a lot of old favorites before I packed them up. Even at the library today, I managed to pick up a new graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time to check out. With all this rereading, I thought I could share a few of my very favorite books that I will always come back to read one more time. There are lots of other books series I love and like to reread, but these are some of the ones I’ve read 10 or more times, that I come back to every few years, that I pull off the shelf just to read a favorite chapter when I’m feeling down. Not surprisingly, several of these are books I’ve been reading since I was a kid, but since I’ve stopped expecting to feel like a “real grown-up” anytime in the next 50 years, that doesn’t seem to bother me.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. This is the only actual “adult” book on the list, and I first read it my senior year of high school for English class. I wasn’t expecting anything super exciting from it (it was one of our last books for the year, and the others live in the range of “mostly interesting” to ” extremely depressing” in my memory), but a friend and I opened up my copy during math class and read the first line. It was ironic–it was funny! I continued to enjoy the story, and the fact that it was basically a romance did not hurt the book in my opinion at all. I also loved the use of letters in the story, particularly since my then-boyfriend (now-husband) and I regularly wrote letters during the week just for the fun of getting mail from each other (we didn’t go to the same high school). I now routinely reread P&P every few years (and bits and pieces in between), usually in the spring. I’ve read 4 of Austen’s other books (I still need to read Northanger Abbey), and this one far and away remains my favorite.

Many Waters, by Madeleine L’Engle.

Yep, this is the edition I have, too.

This is the book I still consider my all-time favorite. Granted, I have lots of favorites depending on the day and my mood, but I discovered this one sometime around fifth grade, and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. Not one of L’Engle’s best known works, Many Waters stars Sandy and Dennys Murry, Meg’s younger twin brothers who are much more ordinary than either Meg or the youngest brother, Charles Wallace. Sandy and Dennys accidentally interrupt one of their scientist parents’ time-traveling experiments and blow themselves into the story of Noah and the Ark.

I just reread this from cover-to-cover for the first time in many years, and I was able to think a little more logically about why I love the book so much. It certainly has its faults–there is some serious repetition, some of the language is so sparsely lyrical that it almost doesn’t make sense, and L’Engle seems to sometimes confuse her characters in passages of dialogue, especially when the two twins are talking together. But even with all of this, I just love it. I love that L’Engle took a familiar story and wove a whole world under it, without changing any of the details from the Biblical text. I love that the women have more of a role in here. I like how she handled sex–it’s definitely there, but my 5th or 6th grade self missed a lot of the references to it, and it’s presented as something that’s important and great, but that has to be approached with care. And I like the twins themselves, how they are matter-of-fact, regular guys who manage to adopt to a fantastic time and place. They see lots of awful, evil things going on in the world, but they also see the good and don’t despair.

I know many people who just don’t think this one works, and maybe it’s just that I liked it when I first encountered it, but it works for me.

Beauty and Spindle’s End, both by Robin McKinley. My first post for the Hub was all about Robin McKinley, so it’s not surprising that two of her books are here. My mom handed me Beauty sometime in late elementary or early middle school and told me I would love it, and I did, and still do. Going back to it, I can see that it’s a first novel (two of McKinley’s favorite things are books and horses, and both come in strongly here–plus, there are lots of elements about the Beast’s castle that are pure wish-fulfillment), but it’s still a beautiful and well-told story, gives a neat twist on the folktale, and has a great protagonist. Spindle’s End was published about 20 years after Beauty, but it has a similar fairy-tale “feel” to it. It’s a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, and I especially enjoy that there are two protagonists (first, Katriona, then Rosie as she grows) and the strong role that female friendship plays.

Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling. I’m too old to have been one of the kids who “grew up with Harry,” and yet in many ways I feel like I did. I discovered the series in high school, and read the first three books all in one swoop. The 4th one came out the summer after I graduated high school, the 5th one while I was in college, the 6th after my first and only year of teaching, and the last one when I was half-way through library school. I may not have grown up with Harry, but he was there for a lot of milestones, and I still like to hang out with him, Ron, and Hermione frequently.

If I had to choose a favorite from the series, this would be it.

As I said, there are more, even more that should be on this list, but these make up the core of my go-to comfort reads. What are yours?

Yikes, it’s almost halfway through May, and I’ve packed about 6 boxes. We did adopt the dog who came to visit us in April, though…priorities, right?

Angel

The main topic of this post is one I’ve been meaning to write since last fall…but backing up even further, in January 2013, one of my New Year’s Resolutions was the read the Bible straight through–start at Genesis, read a chapter every day until I finished.

Now in May 2014, I’m on the book of 1 Samuel. Not very far in. The Bible is, of course, a very long book, but the main problem would be me not reading every day. Anyway, I have at least kept with it enough that I’m still going, instead of having given up back in Exodus. One of my main reasons for doing this is that I’ve read the whole New Testament (taking a NT survey class in college where it was required reading sure helped!), but there are lots of books in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible that I hadn’t really read before, and I would like that to change.

The book of Numbers is one of those books that I had never read before, and it definitely took me awhile to find it interesting. After all, it’s called “Numbers” in part because the first section of the book is a series of censuses of the Israelites. But it does pick up from there. For one thing, the story of Balaam and the donkey? I had heard that it was in the Bible, but had never encountered it until I finally read Numbers (Ch. 23). It’s a great story, too…not only is the donkey smart enough not to go where there’s an angel standing with a drawn sword, but God lets the donkey talk long enough to question Balaam about beating him until Balaam himself can see the angel.

There’re two other stories that I wanted to mention. One is a rebellion by some of the Israelites in which the ground swallows up the rebels (Ch. 16). Not perhaps the most pleasant story, but certainly as exciting as anything in most novels. The second seems to me like it might be one of the earliest feminist stories. In Chapter 27, daughters of a man who died without having any sons ask that their father’s inheritance be given to them instead of passed over to one of their uncles, and it is! There is still certainly lots of signs of the patriarchal system in Numbers, including that the women have to marry within their own tribe to keep the inheritance from passing to another tribe, but I still found it exciting and fascinating.

So if you are looking to explore a lesser-known book of the Bible, I would recommend giving Numbers a try…just skim all those censuses!

Share meals and catching up time with some friends and family members.

Celebrate Easter. (I have really cute pictures, but they are basically all of the kids. Instead, enjoy this version of the Widor Toccata that my husband arranged for organ and saxophone quartet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dldzAgsQor0 )

Have a dog visit for a week.

Visit the Life and Science Museum several times, and Marbles once.

Go hiking at Eno River State Park.

Pretty view of the Eno River.

Can you find the bridge in the picture?

Favorite activity of the day: stone throwing into the river.

Finally see the movie Frozen.

Celebrate a 6th birthday.

Another perk of living in NC: strawberries in season for an April birthday.

Hey, hey, it’s one year since I started this blog. Not yet to 100 posts, but we’ll celebrate anyway.

I’ve been rotten about keeping up with the books I’m reading with my kids over the last month or two, but I’ve had my own little reading boom, so I’m going to share some of the books I’ve enjoyed recently.

Only one of those came from the library (probably part of my problem with our book collection size…), but I enjoyed each of them nonetheless:

I have had this on my nightstand for years now, and I finally decided that it was getting read…and I’m so glad I did. This book has restored my faith in literary fiction. I think the plotting and writing were beautifully done, but the story was enjoyable and gripping, too, and I did not feel like the whole human race was going to hell in a handbasket when I’d finished. Also, librarians are some of the heroes of the book, so you know it has to be pretty good.

The overarching story follows book conservator Hanna Heath as she is given the once-and-a-lifetime of studying and conserving the famous Sarajevo Haggadah in the 1990s, but then each section follows a different character who was part of the book’s previous history. Although Brooks is very upfront that the story and all the characters are fictional, it is based on some of the history of the real Sarajevo Haggadah, which Brooks learned about in her previous work as a journalist.

This was quite a book, and having seen the entire first season and part of the second season of the TV show, I enjoyed seeing where the stories matched and where they differed. I enjoyed Worth’s narration of both stories about her patients and life at Nonnatus House, and I didn’t find her occasional judgements about the people she encountered as bothersome as other readers did, because she was honest about her feelings and about her naiveté at the time, and also fairly self-critical about them. It’s still hard to believe that people were having babies my parents’ age in a fashion that seems like it should be older than my great-grandparents, but it certainly was fascinating.

It’s been awhile since I read the first book in the series, but I enjoyed this installment very much. It was nice that I was already interested in both Deryn and Alek (it took me awhile to get into the alternating points of view with Leviathan), and the story certainly kept up the action. Some of the dilemmas that arise from Deryn pretending to be a boy are pretty funny…especially as the reader realizes (likely more than Deryn herself) just how many people are starting to guess that she’s a girl.

I liked this book in spite of myself. I bought it because it looked interesting (and because I like fairy tale retellings, and didn’t know a whole lot about the Arabian Nights), but when I started it, I felt like the narration was a little too self-conscious, trying a little too hard to create a mystical story aura. Still, the story itself was good enough, and the characters were likable enough, that I was eventually able to forget about the narration and just get lost in the story.

It took me awhile to pick this one up because I knew it took place in a concentration camp. My mom and I have discussed how it was easier to read books about the Holocaust before and, in her case (and hopefully mine, once I get there!), after our kids were young–but I’m still right in the young-kid stage. What strikes me reading this book now was how Rose was not yet okay at the end of the book, even though you know pretty early on that she survives and you get the sense that she will eventually be okay. Also, the fact that her mother doesn’t get to see her afterwards, and may not even know what she’s gone through…as bad as it is, I think I’d want to know what my daughter’s been through.

But all that aside, it’s an excellent book, you can tell Wein has thoroughly done her research, and Rosie and her friends are heroines worth rooting for.

My generally feeling about spring cleaning is that it’s a good idea, in theory. I mean, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family did spring and fall cleaning every year, and they always lived in “little houses,” so if their houses needed it, mine probably do, too.

I have, however, yet to actually complete spring cleaning of an entire house. We are kind of close this year…the main part of the house is uncluttered and about as clean as it’s ever been, but we’ve kind of cheated by shoving lots of stuff out to the garage and getting new carpet and paint to help the house sell. I’m enjoying the feeling of a clean house in the meantime, knowing it will not last and is unlikely to be duplicated in the near future.

But today, I did a different kind of spring cleaning: cleaning out the freezer to prepare for the return of the CSA box next week!! Since we never eat all of our produce on a given week, I tend to cook and freeze lots of it, and I wanted to start off with a (relatively) clean freezer, plus a better knowledge of what food we already had.

Here’s what I threw out (and I am quite proud that this list is not longer):

lots of ends of bread loaves (both good bread from the bakery and not so good from the grocery store) that never made it into bread pudding or breadcrumbs

lasagna sauce from June 2013

pizza sauce from September 2013

grease from the grease pot, which was already slated to be thrown out but just hadn’t gotten there yet

shredded zucchini from August 2013

1 quart bag of cooked kale from May 2013

a can of orange juice that said “best before May 2012”

On my “need to use soon” list:

2 kinds of chorizo

1 quart bag of collards from November 2013 (I’m giving myself a 6 month grace period on food in the freezer, and the collards and chorizo is all going into Mexican beans and greens this week)

Cheese and pasta casserole, also from November (we ate it tonight, and so far everyone seems healthy)

2 pie crusts from December 2013

Ham and green bean casserole from January 2014

Navy beans from February 2014

Frozen raspberries from who-knows-when, but they still look ok

Frozen cookie dough that my mom brought down in February, so I assume they still have some good freezer life in them

And finally, on my “need to use, but less urgently” list:

Duck stock from January 2014 (at least 5 or 6 cups, but it’s easy to use a lot of stock in a few dishes)

Pancake mix leftover from March’s pancake supper at church

Frozen green beans (from the store, not the farm share)

Frozen broccoli (ditto)

Pork chops

Pork roast

Bread bought in the last week and put in the freezer to last longer

Girl Scout cookies bought in February

Frozen macaroni and cheese (also from my mom)

Ice cream bought in the last month

Granola made last week

Ground beef bought last week

We’ve got some eating ahead of us, but I think we are ready to start the next growing season…next up to tackle is the random ingredients in the fridge and pantry that I don’t want to move to Maryland with us!